Monday, June 30, 2014

Edgelands

A year ago when I blogged about Robert Macfarlane's The Old Ways I said that it was almost as if the book was designed specifically to please me (in contrast to much of our current culture which seems to be designed specifically to annoy the hell out of me)...In The Old Ways Macfarlane followed some of the ancient walking routes of Europe and conjured up the literary ghosts of previous travellers on those routes, particularly the poet Edward Thomas. The Old Ways became an unlikely international best seller on the strength of its writing and by appealing to the inner yearning of urban based reviewers and readers for the beauty of the great outdoors. Edgelands (Vintage 2012) is a travel book written by two poets, Michael Symmons RobertsandPaul Farley, which is a kind of anti-Robert Macfarlane. Instead of looking for the wilderness at the top of Scotland or in some deep wadi in Palestine Roberts and Farley find the strange, wild and wonderful just down the road from us in that bit of wasteland behind the bus station or in old quarries or junkyards or abandoned factories or canals. In Edgelands the spirit is less Robert Macfarlane and John Muir and more JG Ballard and William Burroughs. The book sets out to be an exploration of "England's True Wilderness" and it reminded me of Ballard's Unlimited Dream Company and Concrete Island and Ian Sinclair's walk around the M25 recorded in London Orbital. Because the authors are poets who love poetry there is a full length poem or a lengthy extract in nearly every chapter from many great contemporary poets. Even more so than Macfarlane the authors realise that it is poets and artists who can see through the mundane to the sublime beyond.

21 comments:

The scattered buildings and rusting contraptions of the West Highlands and Hebrides (and remote West of Ireland too) come as a bit of a shock to the traveller from Australia or America who thought that kind of beauty/ugliness was our own original sin. We expect rural Europe to be picturesque and historical but not in that way.

Meades was great on Aberdeen in that series. I don't know anyone here who was offended by it although those kind of comments could have caused outrage elsewhere.

Adrian,The "Edgelands" that struck me as most uiquely American is found in an area called "Tuba City." It lies in Hopi Indian country adjacent to the vast Navajo Reservation bordering 4 western states.It is bleak,arid area filled with litter blowing everywhere due the vast dust storms which seem to rival the Sahara.We were walking through this area when with blowing dust and tumbleweed we saw a sign above a wooden structure that said "Home Of The world Famous Velveeta Burger." Not to be outdone on the route home we saw a large sign advertising "porn sales and peepshow" and right next to it an equally large sign "Jesus Is Watching ."Best Alan

Alan, I've been to Tuba City, during my youthful wanderings in the 70s. It's in the Navajo area as I recall but the Hopi area is indeed nearby and contained within the Navajo. I went to a Hopi village consisting of portacabins atop a mesa and bought some turquoise jewellery for my ex-girlfriend. I don't know why, it was over. I suppose the desolation matched my mood.

I just saw Edgelands on my shelf here today or yesterday, which I picked up on your rec awhile ago, though still unread. It has now mysteriously disappeared when I want to look at it.I don't think Amazon has it, but you can get it pretty easily through a third party source there, or wherever you go to find secondhand books.

It's funny that in the U.S. a lot of countryside looks more beautiful because of old ruined barns and farmhouses. But I'm sure people didn't look at them that way when they were freshly abandoned. So maybe an eye for this stuff comes with distance.

I used to go down to the Taos reservation quite a lot when I lived in Denver. I loved that part of New Mexico because of the sky. Thats when I knew that Breaking Bad was filmed on location not Hollywood because the sky looks different out there.

Yes, but I think it's also a kind of collective shift, and the passage of time is part of it. I bet for instance that people will finally realize the beauty of telephone wires when everything finally goes wireless. Birds will be bummed too.

Its funny you mention telephone wires. In the documentary Crumb, Art Crumb talks about the hideousness of telephone wires and "all that junk", but I've always found them beautiful. Especially when I lived in Denver and they'd get covered with snow, snowy telephone wires against a deep blue sky - lovely.

I think it was my teacher Mary Holmes who clued me in about telephone wires, and I have a friend now who does some really nice photo and print stuff with birds on wires. I don't really have any original thoughts, but I'm a good listener. Sometimes.

I agree wholeheartedly with you, Brendan, about Wichita Lineman - one of the best songs ever written with THE most romantic line ever written in it: 'And I need you more than want you, and I want you for all time'. Sends shivers up my spine, even now!

Brendan, You are indeed a well travelled man with a bit of the "Romantic."I just listened to Wichita Lineman and it sent chills down my spine with it's perceptiveness.How true Anne about "need and want".Well done.I am going to order "Restraint of Beasts."Thanks for the heads up.Best Alan

Good to share the company of you crime novel aficionados with poetry and romance in your soul - like our host, Adrian. I hope you will enjoy The Restraint of Beasts (I should be getting commission!) but I'm pretty sure you will, especially if you liked All Quiet on the Orient Express, or anything by the Coen brothers. Mills has the gift of taking a seemingly unlikely and tedious subject and making it totally compulsive reading.

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More about me

I was born and grew up in Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland. After studying philosophy at Oxford University I emigrated to New York City where I lived in Harlem for seven years working in bars, bookstores, building sites and finally the basement stacks of the Columbia University Medical School Library in Washington Heights.

In 2000 I moved to Denver, Colorado where I taught high school English and started writing fiction in earnest. My first full length novel Dead I Well May Be was shortlisted for the 2004 Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award and was picked by Booklist as one of the 10 best crime novels of the year.

In mid 2008 I moved to St. Kilda, Melbourne, Australia with my wife and kids. My last book In The Morning I'll Be Gone won the 2014 Ned Kelly Award.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

All Hail McKinty!

"If Raymond Chandler had grown up in Northern Ireland he would have written The Cold Cold Ground."

---The Times

"Hardboiled charm, evocative dialogue, an acute sense of place and a sardonic sense of humour make McKinty one to watch."

---The Guardian

"A literary thriller that is as concerned with exploring the poisonously claustrophobic demi-monde of Northern Ireland during the Troubles, and the self-sabotaging contradictions of its place and time, as it is with providing the genre’s conventional thrills and spills. The result is a masterpiece of Troubles crime fiction: had David Peace, Eoin McNamee and Brian Moore sat down to brew up the great Troubles novel, they would have been very pleased indeed to have written The Cold Cold Ground."

---The Irish Times

"McKinty is a big new talent."

---The Daily Telegraph

"McKinty is a gifted man with poetry coursing through his veins and thrilling writing dripping from his fingertips."

---The Sunday Independent

"Adrian McKinty is fast gaining a reputation as the finest of the new generation of Irish crime writers, and it's easy to see why on the evidence of The Cold Cold Ground."

---The Glasgow Herald

"McKinty is a storyteller with the kind of style and panache that blur the line between genre and mainstream."

---Kirkus Reviews

"McKinty's literate expertly crafted crime novel confirms his place as one of his generation's leading talents."

---Publishers Weekly

"McKinty crackles with raw talent. His dialogue is superb, his characters rich and his plotting tight and seemless. He writes with a wonderful and wonderfully humorous flair for language raising his work above most crime genre offerings and bumping it right up against literature."

---The San Francisco Chronicle

"McKinty keeps getting better. He melds the snap and crackle of the old Mickey Spillane tales with the literary skills of Raymond Chandler and sets it all down in his own artful way."

---The Rocky Mountain News

"The first of McKinty's Forsythe novels, "Dead I Well May Be," was intense, focused and entirely brilliant. This one is looser-limbed, funnier...so, I imagine, is the middle book, "The Dead Yard," which I haven't read but which Publishers Weekly included on its list of the 12 best novels of 2006, along with works by Peter Abrahams, Richard Ford, Cormac McCarthy and George Pelecanos."

---The Washington Post

"McKinty, who grew up in Northern Ireland, has an ear for language and a taste for violence, and he serves up a terrifically gory, swiftly paced thriller."

---The Miami Herald

"There's nothing like an Irish tough guy. And we're not talking about Gentleman Gerry Cooney here. No, we mean the new breed of bare-knuckle Irish writers like Adrian McKinty, Ken Bruen and John Connolly who are bringing fresh life to the crime fiction genre."

---The Philadelphia Inquirer

"McKinty's writing is dark and witty with gritty realism, spot on dialogue, and fascinating characters."

---The Chicago Sun-Times

"If you like your noir staples such as beautiful women, betrayal, murder, mixed with a heavy dose of blood, crunched bones, body parts flying around served up with some throwaway humour, you need look no further, McKinty delivers all of this with the added bonus that the writing is pitch perfect."

---The Barcelona Review

"I really enjoyed [Dead I Well May Be’s] combination of toughness and a striking literary style. Both those things are evident in Hidden River. McKinty is going places."

---The Observer

"This is a terrific read. McKinty gives us a strong non stop story with attractive characters and fine writing."

---The Morning Star

"[McKinty] draws us close and relates a fantastic tale of murder and revenge in low, wry tones, as if from the next barstool...he drops out of conversational mode to throw in a few breathtaking fever-dream sequences for flavor. And then he springs an ending so right and satisfying it leaves us numb with delight and ready to pop for another round. Start the cliche machine: This is a profoundly satisfying book from a major new talent and one of the best crime fiction debuts of the year."

---Booklist

"The story is soaked in the holy trinity of the noir thriller: betrayal, money and murder, but seen through with a panache and political awareness that give McKinty a keen edge over his rivals."

---The Big Issue

"A darkly humorous cross between a hard-boiled mystery and a Beat novel."

---The St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"A roller coaster of highs and lows, light humour and dark deeds, the powerful undercurrent of McKinty's talent will swiftly drag you away. Let's hope the author does not slow down anytime soon."

---The Irish Examiner

"A virtual carnival of slaughter."

---The Wall Street Journal

"McKinty has once again harnassed the power of poetry, violence, lust and revenge to forge a sequel to his acclaimed Dead I Well May Be."

"McKinty writes with the soul of a poet; his prose dances off the pages with Old World grace and haunting intensity. It's crime fiction on the level of Michael Connolly with the conviction of James Hall."

---The Jackson Clarion-Ledger

"The Bloomsday Dead is the explosive final installment in a trilogy of kinetic thrillers."

---The New York Times

"Adrian McKinty has garnered nothing but praise for his first two books. The third in the trilogy The Bloomsday Dead should leave no doubt that he is a true star. Fast moving and highly engaging this is a great book. McKinty just gets better and better."

---CrimeSpree

"Until The Dead Yard's relentless, poignant ending you'll turn these pages as quickly as you can."

---The Cleveland Plain Dealer

"McKinty's Dead Trilogy has been praised by critics, who call it "intense," "masterful" and "loaded with action." If your reading pleasure leans toward thrillers offering suspense, close calls, wry wit, sharp dialogue, local color and sudden mayhem, you wont do better."

What's Next For Me?

A couple more books, a few birthdays, some shuffleboard then a period spent in the digestive tract of earthworms, followed by molecular breakdown, the sun boiling into space, the heat death of the universe, atomic decay, perpetual darkness, a trillion years of nothingness and then, if we're lucky, brane collapse, a new singularity and a new Big Bang.